flexography

Info*Flex – Social Media Test

by JimRaffel on May 2, 2010

Tomorrow morning I board a plane for the Info*Flex trade show. Time for a social media test of the strategies I have utilized over the past six months.

My social media test parametersPicture 2.png will be to keep track of the number of comments I get about blog posts, Facebook and Twitter activity. My intention is to count and categorize the comments. The idea for this test came from a conversation last night with my new friend @dwilde about quantifying B2B results of all my social media activities.

As a small business owner I follow my gut and know these strategies are working. As a blogger I never stop looking for the why and the how. It’s time to pick my head up look around and understand the results of all the hard work. Make no mistake about it social media is hard work when done correctly for business purposes as @imlucid pointed out in this post about advertising during difficult times.

I’m still working out how to track the results but I have a little over 24 hours left to figure that out. My thoughts are to track comments in three basic categories.

  1. Comments about blog posts (or the newsletter I send subscribers)
  2. Comments about Tweets
  3. Comments about Facebook

Also, for those who initiate a conversation I am considering asking them about the value of LinkedIn status updates and the new blog that is part of the ColorMetrix web-site as compared to this standalone product.

The KISS(Keep It Simple Stupid) principle will rule my decisions on a tracking methodology. The social media test must be easy to tally on the fly while working a trade show floor. If I make the measurement too complex I will either not do it, forget answers or incorrectly categorize results. I want results. I want good solid results of the social media test to come back and share with you guys.

If you have done something like this or just have good ideas please jump in the comments and share. I promise to do a blog post as soon after the show as I can to report what I learn.

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Continue Reading 7 comments }blogging, conferences, flexography, Marketer, measurement, new media, personal development, sales, social media, Twitter

#33: Thoughts on GRACoL 7 and Standards in General

by JimRaffel on May 4, 2006

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of this week I was in Louisville at the FFTA Annual Forum & INFO*FLEX exhibition.  It was my first time attending this event and I was impressed.  We even got to spend Tuesday evening at the Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom theme park in Louisville.  I must say it was fun not having to wait in line for any of the rides (the park was closed to the public).

I was busy assisting one of our distributors (ColorManagement.com) with booth duty Sunday and Monday, but I did manage to attend several technical sessions focused on Color Management Tuesday.  One of these sessions was about the still fairly new Printing Across Boarders (PAB) initiative.  At the urging of Adam Dewitz over at Printmode.net I resumed receiving e-mail from the [pab] forum several weeks ago, so was interested to hear what was happening.

The primary focus of the presentation by Gerald Gerlach of Integrity Graphics was the GRACoL 7 (G7) methodology.  It was during this presentation, and over the subsequent 24 hours that I began to solidify my current overall feelings about G7 and more importantly about graphic arts standards in general.

For my entire career in the graphic arts (more than 20 years now) I have nibbled at the edges of the standards community.  I have always found it fascinating and have felt I had something to contribute.  While my main role in life is now selling, I am still a pretty fair graphic arts technician when I need to be.  I have not been more involved in the standards community for one reason; time.  Those who carry the vast majority of the standards load in this industry do so as volunteers.  While they may be on a company payroll somewhere I assure that only a very small percentage are paid to do only standards work.

These people give up evenings, weekends, and other valuable personal time so we can have graphic arts standards.  I wish to say to all of you (and you know who you are) THANK YOU!  So, perhaps instead of standing on the sidelines and criticizing (constructive or otherwise) all of us should be saying “how can we help you.”

While I do not completely agree with the G7 methodology, I do agree it is a step forward.  I believe this because our competition in the Graphic Arts industry is not other printers.  It is other communication mediums.   Can you imagine television succeeding without any standards?  Can you imagine the internet succeeding without any standards?

We as an industry need the ability to print an image consistently anywhere in the world.  This is the true goal of G7 as far as I can tell.  While I feel in the case of many printers this means you must “dumb down “ your press, the trade off for regional, national, or international print buyer makes this consequence of the methodology worth while.  Any printer can still apply their “secret sauce” technology to specialty jobs.  Just because you can print to G7 does not mean you must print to G7.

In conclusion, I want to ask the working members of BRIDGS, CGATS, FIRST, GRACoL, SNAP, & SWOP….How can I help?

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Continue Reading 1 comment }blogging, CGATS, conferences, flexography, GRACoL, guidelines, specification

#22: Why 95 is more than 100

January 12, 2006

When printing with the flexographic (Flexo) printing process it is not uncommon for the 95-99% tone patches to have reported dot areas greater than 100%. While visiting a ColorMetrix customer last week I got a refresher course on why this phenomenon occurs. So, I thought I would start the year of golden nuggets off with [...]

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